Bestsellers, Crime & Mystery: October 2017

Verdict of Twelve (British Library Crime Classics)Raymond Postgate
A woman is on trial for her life, accused of murder. The twelve members of the jury each carry their own secret burden of guilt and prejudice which could affect the outcome. We follow the trial through the eyes of the jurors as they hear the evidence and try to reach a unanimous verdict. Will they find the defendant guilty, or not guilty? And will the jurors’ decision be the correct one? Since its first publication in 1940, Verdict of Twelve has been widely hailed as a classic of British crime writing – that very few have ever heard of or had access to. All hail the British Library rediscoveries!Classic mystery | TP | $27.95

A Matter of Loyalty (Very English Mysteries 03)Elizabeth Edmondson & Anselm Audley
With a touch of Downton Abbey, a whisper of Agatha Christie and a nod to John Le Carré, A Matter Of Loyalty is the third and final book in this delightfully classic and witty murder-mystery series. (Sadly, Edmondson died last year and the book has been completed by her son, Anselm Audley.)Mystery | TP | $31.95

Force of Nature (Aaron Falk 02)Jane Harper
When five colleagues are forced to go on a corporate retreat in the wilderness, they reluctantly pick up their backpacks and start walking down the muddy path. But one of the women doesn’t come out of the woods. And each of her companions tells a slightly different story about what happened. Federal Police Agent Aaron Falk has a keen interest in the whereabouts of the missing hiker. In an investigation that takes him deep into isolated forest, Falk discovers secrets lurking in the mountains and a tangled web of personal and professional friendship, suspicion, and betrayal among the hikers. But did that lead to murder? Sequel to the multi-award-winning The Dry. Recommended!Mystery | TP | $32.99

The Dead Shall Be Raised and The Murder of a Quack (British Library Crime Classics omnibus)George Bellairs
George Bellairs is the nom de plume of Harold Blundell, a crime writer and bank manager born in Heywood, near Rochdale, Lancashire, who wrote more than 50 books, most featuring the series’ detective Inspector Littlejohn. He also wrote four novels under the alternative pseudonym Hilary Landon. And he’s pretty much been forgotten about. Until now. All hail the British Library Crime Classic rediscoveries!Classic mystery | TP | $27.95

Death at Breakfast (Crime Club)John Rhode
Victor Harleston awoke with uncharacteristic optimism. Today he would be rich at last. Half an hour later, he gulped down his breakfast coffee and pitched to the floor, gasping and twitching. When the doctor arrived, he recognised instantly that it was a fatal case of poisoning and called in Scotland Yard. Despite an almost complete absence of clues, the circumstances were so suspicious that Inspector Hanslet soon referred the evidence to his friend and mentor, Dr Lancelot Priestley, whose deductions revealed a diabolically ingenious murder that would require equally fiendish ingenuity to solve… Reprint, first published in 1936 – credit to Collins’ Crime Club in this instance – who are also finding lots of forgotten ‘classics’.Classic mystery | PBK | $24.99

The Black Friar (Damian Seeker 02)S G MacLean
London, 1655, and Cromwell’s regime is under threat from all sides. Damian Seeker, Captain of Cromwell’s Guard, is all too aware of the danger facing them. Parliament resents his control of the army; while the army resents his absolute power. In the East End of London, a group of religious fanatics plots rebellion. In the midst of all this, a stonemason uncovers a perfectly-preserved body dressed in the robes of a Dominican friar, bricked up in a wall in the crumbling Black Friars. Creepy monk machinations…Historical mystery | PBK | $19.99

Signal For Vengeance (Inspector Colbeck 13)Edward Marston
1860, Wimborne, Dorset. Rebecca Tullidge, miserably married to her callous husband, is having an affair with a railway officer, John Bedloe. Much to her distress, she trips over her lover’s dead body on the railway tracks. On discovering Bedloe has a town’s worth of enemies as well as a sordid past, Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming must unearth who is capable of plotting a violent murder. And with a pregnant wife at home, Colbeck must work quickly (clearly, she is very pregnant!).Historical mystery | PBK | $19.99

Solitaire (Clara Vine 05)Jane Thynne
1940: the first summer of the war. Berlin is being bombed and nightly blackouts suffocate the city. Then France falls, and a shadow descends. A shadow has fallen over Clara Vine’s own life, too. She is an Anglo-German woman in a country that hates England. Then she is summoned to meet the Propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, who has decided that Clara should adopt a new role – as his spy… Love, love, love these! Thynne is married to Phillip Kerr – and Ron is loving these almost as much as his Bernie Gunther novels set in Nazi Germany. Recommended! (The series begins with Black Roses (PBK, $19.99).)Mystery/suspense | PBK | $19.99

The Spy’s Daughter (Philip Mangan 03)Adam Brookes
Meet Pearl Tao: an American girl with a lethal secret. Pearl longs for the life of a normal American teenager living in the Washington DC suburbs. But she is different. Her gift for mathematics means overprotective parents and college sponsorship from a secretive technology corporation. And now, aged nineteen, she is beginning to understand what her parents intend for her and the terrifying role she is to play. Her only hope of escape lies with two sidelined and discredited spies: Trish Patterson and Philip Mangan. Finding out the truth about Pearl will be the biggest mission they’ll ever undertake. This is fantastic! If you’re a fan of Le Carré or John Lawton – you will love this! (Mangan first appears in Night Heron (PBK, $19.99).)Thriller | TP | $29.99